Policy —

Public radio remakes itself by entering the iPhone age

Public Radio Exchange has produced terrific iPhone apps giving access to …

When Public Radio Exchange (PRX) developed the free Public Radio Player for the iPhone, the nonprofit hoped for 500,000 downloads. It now has 2.5 million. "I'm very happy with that number," says PRX executive director Jake Shapiro.

He should be. The PRX dev team has already cranked out two great iPhone apps, one for public radio in general and one for the popular show This American Life in particular. Both apps have positioned public radio as a major force when it comes to on-demand mobile applications.

The Public Radio Player not only streams public radio from across the country to an iPhone; it also provides on-demand access to shows like Marketplace and A Prairie Home Companion. This American Life's app costs a few bucks, but it provides streaming access to every episode in the show's history. If you have an iPhone and a data connection, you have essentially unlimited listening options for a grand total of $2.99. And you have them on your own schedule.

PRX is out to push innovation in public radio; even at its founding in 2002, Shapiro says that PRX was meant to be "entrepreneurial" and it immediately began hiring talented developers. As the iPhone surged in popularity, they saw a chance to push public radio's many voices out to a new audience—but this wasn't a strategy without risks, and it didn't please every station.

Disintermediation 101

Imagine that you're a public radio station. People nearby could previously listen to your work with a radio; those farther away might visit your station website and listen to a stream. Either way, there was effort involved on the listener's part, effort that associated the content with your station.

Listen whenever you want

With the free iPhone app, anyone can call up hundreds of public radio stations across the country. Want to listen to Marketplace but just missed your local broadcast? PRX has made it simple to skip over to some other station that has the show in a later time slot or sits in another time zone. Local stations can lose their "branding" as listeners sever any ties of loyalty and drift to wherever the show is most convenient to hear. If a stream goes down, a tap of the finger opens another, and from a different station.

Then there are the on-demand streams that could be dialed up at any time, no station needed. For public radio, which has for decades relied heavily on the support of listeners, this sort of centralization might seem to benefit the big national shows at the expense of the local broadcasters—in other words, exactly what happened when TV networks put shows up on Hulu and their own websites, cutting the necessary connection between viewers and local broadcast affiliates.

Shapiro diplomatically admits to a "certain anxiety" among stations when big national shows like Morning Edition could bypass stations to reach audiences.

But for every loser, there's another winner; the producers of the content suddenly had bigger audiences when it became easier to listen to their material. Besides, the trend looks unstoppable, and it's been going on for some time.

Shapiro argues that, by making national programming so easily available, PRX actually pushes stations to do less of what everyone is doing (broadcasting All Things Considered) and doing more of what no one else is doing.

Consider podcasts. WBEZ, the local public radio station in Chicago, is actually the home station for This American Life. Despite living in Chicago, I haven't listened to the show on the "radio" for years. This American Life puts out a terrific podcast that comes directly to my computer; if I had no interest in knowing which station was behind it, there would be nothing pushing me to find out. That's fine for This American Life, but not always so great for WBEZ when it comes time to raise funds.

PRX has a reputation for being "thoughtful about balancing the needs and efforts of stations and producers," says Shapiro, and he's sensitive to the issue of funding. Foundations may be less inclined to give to stations if less people are listening, and users are less inclined to give if they feel no connection to their local station. But PRX is about pushing change in public radio, even as it adds value.

Shapiro argues that, by making national programming so easily available, PRX actually pushes stations to do less of what everyone is doing (broadcasting All Things Considered) and doing more of what no one else is doing. Some of that involves localism—highlighting music from one's region, producing local news and documentaries. Some of that involves just being different—producing shows that might not be local but might feature national or international music that no one else is playing. (The famous KCRW is terrific at this; Chapel Hill, NC's public radio station has long produced Back Porch Music, a wonderful folk music show.) It's a tough shift, but a necessary one.

As content becomes portable, stations have to rethink their "unique value propostion as local institutions" and rething their role as mere broadcasters of other people's work. Tools like the Public Radio Player won't help small stations that don't do original material, but they can be a boon to those that do. The player exposes schedules, it allows local stations to stand out by doing local programming, and it allows those looking for such things to find them in a way that was difficult before.

Donations

But apps like the Public Radio Player could really add value when it comes to donations. Sure, the app can sever local connections—but it create a whole new Web of connections between listeners and programs around the country. Instead of donating once a year to a local public radio stations, listeners could give twenty bucks to their five favorite shows, and do it with a couple of taps.

Jake Shapiro (credit: Matt MacDonald/PRX)

According to Shapiro, that's exactly the vision. On the This American Life podcast, host Ira Glass often makes a special pitch just to podcast listeners: hey, you downloaded the show for free, which is great, but could you help us pay our $100,000+ per year bandwidth bill? The odds of people contributing a few bucks go way up if they can tap a button at that moment, rather than wait till they are back home and in front of a computer.

What's standing in the way? Apple, which prohibits cash donations through iPhone apps. It's a "real problem," says Shapiro, and there are "a lot of nonprofits concerned about this," because easy mobile donations "could be transformative" for many causes.

While it waits on Cupertino, PRX has just added some limited banner advertising to the Public Radio Player. PRX is largely grant-funded, but its projects aim to be at least sustainable. The Coporation for Public Broadcasting, which underwrote much of the Public Radio Player, "has encouraged us to find ways to sustain the project beyond grant support, so this is our first foray into mobile advertising," said PRX this week in announcing a new version of the app. "While we continue to investigate ways to support donations, membership, and pledging, this is a complex issue due to Apple’s no-donation policy as well as stations’ own systems. Local ads could be a significant revenue opportunity for stations with local underwriters interested in the mobile audience."

In the meantime, PRX is also also developing its apps for Android, and should have versions available later this year.